Planned hours are stored at several levels: per overall project, per task within a project, and when the ticket module is active additionally per ticket or subtask. Which level you use depends on the granularity of your project control and on how closely you want to monitor the budget.
Planned hours per project
Under Projects > [Project] > Data, the Plan block appears with the module active. Here you store the overall budget, optionally protect against overbooking, and control the escalation emails to the project managers for this project.
Enter planned hours
Enter the total hours estimated for the project in the field Planned hours. Directly below, ZEP shows the currently recorded actual hours, separated into total actual and billable actual hours. This way, you see at a glance how much of the budget has already been used.
Fixed and dynamic planned hours
In the Planned hours (fix) input field, you manually enter a fixed hour value for the project or task. Next to it, ZEP shows the (dyn) value in italics — the automatically calculated sum of the planned hours of all subordinate levels (for example the individual tasks of a project or the tickets of a task). This dynamic value is display-only and cannot be edited.
As long as you do not enter a fixed value, ZEP uses the dynamic sum. As soon as you enter a fixed value, only that value applies — it replaces the dynamic value for all calculations, such as the actual-hours display and the overbooking check. If the fixed value is lower than the sum of the subordinate planning, a red warning icon points this out.
Prevent overbooking
Optionally, in the Prevent overbooking field you choose which bookings are limited: billable times only or billable and non-billable times, each with or without travel times. Bookings that would exceed the planned hours are then rejected by the system, so the plan budget cannot be exceeded by accidental over-bookings. With No, the protection is disabled.
In the field Overbooking stop per day, you additionally define a daily upper limit beyond which no further bookings are possible for the respective day. This prevents a person from booking the entire remaining plan budget on a single day.
Example: For a fixed-price project of 100 hours, you enter 100 in Planned hours and activate Prevent overbooking. At 100 hours reached, ZEP no longer allows any further bookings without the plan being increased or the protection being lifted.
Escalation email when thresholds are reached
When thresholds are configured in the basic settings, ZEP automatically sends an email to the project managers as soon as the actual hours reach a threshold. The typical three-stage setup looks like this:
First threshold, e.g. 50 percent: early notification, no action required yet
Second threshold, e.g. 80 percent: pre-warning with time to talk to the customer about possible adjustments
Third threshold, e.g. 95 percent: acute escalation shortly before the plan ends
With the billable only setting in the basic settings, you decide whether only bookings marked as billable flow into the threshold calculation or all recorded hours.
Planned hours per task
Separate planned hours can be stored per task within a project. Useful when a project is split into several work packages that should be budgeted individually.
Enter planned hours
The entry is made under Projects > [Project] > Tasks > [Task] > Data in the Plan block analogous to the project level: Planned hours as input field, next to it the display of the actual hours accumulated for this task.
The task planned hours are configured independently of the project planned hours; their sum may differ from the project planned hours. This flexibility allows you to budget individual work packages without having to restrict the overall project plan in advance.
Overbooking protection and threshold escalation
The options Prevent overbooking and Overbooking stop per day are also available at task level and work analogous to the project level. Likewise, the thresholds configured in the basic settings trigger an escalation email as soon as the task reaches the respective percentage value.
Example: A project „Website Relaunch“ is estimated at 200 planned hours and internally split into four tasks: Concept (40), Design (60), Development (80), Testing (20). When the Design task reaches the second threshold (e.g., 80 percent of 60, i.e., 48 hours), the project managers receive the pre-warning specifically for this task.
Planned hours in tickets and subtasks
Note: Planned hours in tickets are only available when the ticket module is active.
In tickets and subtasks, you enter planned hours directly in the data form of the ticket. This creates a fine-grained plan structure below the tasks, particularly useful for agile projects where a task consists of many individual tickets and the effort per ticket should be estimated separately.
Unlike project and task planned hours, ticket planned hours do not trigger escalation emails. They serve exclusively for internal effort estimation and later reporting.
Importing planned hours from quotes
Note: Importing from quotes requires the Quotes module.
When a quote is transferred into a project or task, ZEP automatically takes over the planned days calculated in the quote as planned hours in the new project or task. The conversion factor (e.g., 8 hours per day) is set in the basic settings of the Quotes module.
Example: A quote with an effort item of 5 days is converted with factor 8 into 40 planned hours and automatically entered in the new project. On your side, the manual transfer is eliminated, and the budget calculated in the quote remains consistent with the later project plan.